The new Suicide Squad trailer has emerged from last night’s MTV Movie Awards. Let’s get pessimistic and optimistic about this:
Negative – Didn’t we just get a trailer two months ago? This movie doesn’t come out until August. Maybe space out the trailers a little more. Quit tricking us into assuming this must be coming out sooner than it actually is.
Furthermore, you are just in full-on damage control, aren’t you Warner Bros. You release two separate trailers for LEGO Batman within days of each other almost as if to apologize to all the parents who took their kids to see Batman v Superman. Now you release an even funnier, more lighthearted Suicide Squad trailer a week after BvS‘s monumental box office decline has thrown your entire studio regime into question, placing the onus on convincing audiences that BvS was an outlier and you actually remember that superhero movies can be fun. It’s like through Suicide Squad you are pleading, “Please, please, please forgive us. We did better this time, we swear. All those rumors about reshoots were crap. We made a really fun movie even before we knew how hard audiences would reject BvS.”
Also, get some original ideas for a change. Yet another classic rock song, “Ballroom Blitz” this time, “Bohemian Rhapsody” last time, in your trailer about a group of misfits? James Gunn, imitation must be the sincerest form of flattery.
Lastly, why must we see Harley Quinn being gawked at by a bunch of guys as she exposes her bra while changing into her outfit? You already had that unnecessary close-up of her ass in the last trailer. Now this? On the one hand, look how kooky she is to disrobe in front of men and react as if it’s no big deal. On the other hand, look at Margot Robbie’s boobs. Don’t all of you teenage boys who loved BvS want to see this movie even more now? “Harley Quinn’s crazy and awesome but she’s also so freakin’ hot, am I right guys?” That logic also explains why Enchantress is practically naked in her little-to-the-imagination costume glimpsed in the last trailer.
Positive – Maybe those reshoot rumors really were off-base. Jai Courtney already claimed they weren’t doing reshoots to add more humor but instead to add more action. Now Suicide Squad‘s director David Ayer took to Twitter to address this:
#SuicideSquad “reshoots for humor” is silly. When a studio loves your movie and asks what else you want, go for it! #ThanksWB #moreaction
— David Ayer (@DavidAyerMovies) April 11, 2016
And the new trailer is pretty much a series of funny moments as opposed to any kind of intimation of plot, as if the WB marketing department wanted to directly refute Devin Faraci’s claim that Suicide Squad‘s only jokes were contained in the first trailer. Now here’s a bunch of stuff about El Diablo’s fire power, Katana and Captain Boomerang getting up close and personal, Harley Quinn being Harley Quinn, etc. There are seemingly too many jokes for all of them to have come from remarkably recent and still on-going reshoots.
Also, hey, remember how much everyone begrudgingly agreed that Ben Affleck is a good Batman? Turns out, he’s probably a far bigger presence in Suicide Squad than we previously realized. Heck, the closing shot of the trailer is of his Batmobile taking a wicked turn down a city street. Plus, this happens, probably from a flashback related to Harley Quinn’s origin story but we don’t know that for sure:
In comic book terms, that is DC’s current #1 selling character (Batman) carrying it’s #2 selling character (Harley Quinn) to the Batmobile. That might also explain why there is a new shot in this trailer of Harley holding her iconic mallet. WB really, really wants its core audience to connect with this movie’s Harley the same way Deadpool fans did with the Ryan Reynolds movie in February.
Really, a lot of the bad I’ve mentioned has little to do with Suicide Squad and more to do with a general distrust of WB’s in the wake of BvS. I am probably shortchanging the fact that there are some legitimately cool-looking action scenes in this new trailer, particularly when Harley appears to be riding on somebody’s back as she mows down the opposition. Even so, I’m ultimately inclined to agree with Evan over at BirthMoviesDeath:
[Suicide Squad] is either going to be brilliant about-face for the DCCU or an entertaining disaster. I see no in-between on that. BvS was a dour slog. With the pee jar and Jolly Rancher moment, it rubbed up against the entertaining side of bad cinema, but didn’t quite get there. I feel that Suicide Squad has a shot at being legitimately awesome. But if it fails reaching that bar, I feel it also at least has shot at wowing us with badness.
For example, I still don’t quite know what to make of Jared Leto’s Joker, but if it turns out to be a big swing and miss it looks like it will be a far more enjoyable bad performance than Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor.
